explore the ruins in various places. While there he is
warned about resumed rebellion in Kashgar but presses
on nonetheless.
The old photos herewith, with Ottoman Turkish captions,
accompanied the Turkish translation of Von Le Coq's
original German article.//
Right: "Subaşi Lenger: blue-green , 'çini' (glazed) bowl."
Left: "Kızıl: embellished earthenware bowl."
In any event, I had a number of places excavated here (Subaşi Lenger).
A few ancient artifacts were uncovered but my hopes for a find rested
in the ruins north of the western side of the city, which had never been
explored. There, in the upper portion of a cell on the western side, at
an entrance that protruded outside the wall, I found a temple in a hole.
Because of the ground was covered with hardened pebbles that had
been fused together by the humidity, digging was quite difficult.
Besides the temple, which had religious-themed cells and a corridor
that extended to a stupa, there were six other cells. Over the course
of time, a column in the front with religious-themed picture had,
unfortunately, been extracted. Nevertheless, I discovered a sgraffitto
(a technique of wall decor) with Indian writing that resembled
Kharoshthi (an ancient Indian script), on the wall of the back corridor
that had been covered with painted plaster. Additionally, I also found
a number of old coins from the Tang dynasty.
British Consul George Macartney, whose mother was
Chinese, seated second from right.
Just at this moment, though, I received an urgent letter from Macartney
informing me that the rebellion had resumed in Kashgar and that since
there had been some political murders, he asked me to be extremely
careful and to consider fleeing at the appropriate time. But in view of
the difficulty involved in passing along this information to Bartus and
the impossibility of escaping with him to anywhere anyway, I decided
to do nothing.
Although there were subsequently a number of other dangerous
incidents, we were spared from any serious situations. However, the
public order and security was quite disturbed by the Russians' actions
and the agitated Chinese response to them.
"Açık Ilak: a wooden lion upon a base."
In any event, after fourteen days of tiring but successful work we left
this charming but, at the same time, cold and humid place and headed
for the large village of Kırış, located north of Hoca (Khucha/Kuqa).
The ruins of two old temples were very near to the village - Sim-Sim
to the north of the village and Açık Ilak to the southeast. Previously
in 1906 when we excavated the area around Sim-Sim we found no
manuscripts so I began my work this time at the southeast temple.
"Sim Sim: a string of temples in the north."
These two temples had been built separately from each other in
small passes among hills devoid of trees and bushes. The ground
here was unfertile and covered with holes filled with pebbles. As a
consequence, excavation here was difficult and the results meager.
Nevertheless, in one of the temples, I found important wall paintings
and in the other some wooden sculptures. We had quite a hard time
extracting a small, four-cornered temple whose upper portion was
exposed above the ground but we finally succeeded.
"Açık Ilak: temple extracted from under the ground."
Everything within this temple was wet and in ruins. There was,
however, a preserved staircase on a low platform that provided access
to a courtyard with a wooden entrance. Here we found numerous
small sections separated in a way that seemed to indicate that they had
been sitting rooms. There were old household items in these rooms
that had quite a wonderful view. We found some significant paintings
in the area around the Sim-Sim temple, most notably a painting of a
dome. In addition, there were some manuscript remnants found amidst
the debris in a large hole in the middle of the temple situated on the
southern row of hills.
//END of PART THREE//
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